Thursday, December 25, 2014

Merry
Christmas and a Happy, Healthy 2015 to all of our friends and readers.

We here
at The Jade Sphinx are in the Christmas spirit – and have
been for several weeks now, despite the fact that our neighborhood, our city
and our country seem to be in a fairly dire place. Our lives are very disrupted and in constant flux….

But we are still in the Christmas
Spirit. But, at this late date, just
what does the Christmas Spirit mean?

Well … I’m one of those people who is
always predisposed to be happy. I’m a happy man. And, though I’m most
happy at Christmas, I don’t think that’s quite the reason.

I
think, for me, being in the Christmas Spirit is being aware of our time and the
experience of being alive, and then enjoying it. Being aware of passing time
encourages you to be grateful for the many blessings that you have, for still
being alive, for realizing that the world, no matter how terrible things
sometimes are, is full of wonders and marvels. It means reconnecting with
the young person that you were, and seeing the world through the eyes of a
child. Of realizing possibilities, of feeling joy, of remembering that we
are all human beings who are somehow inter-connected. And of being happy
– even when you don’t want to be.

In
short, Christmas is a time for recognizing the miracle of our lives.

And,
to be honest, I simply adore all the things that come with Christmas. I
love Christmas trees. I love Christmas music – both traditional carols
and popular Christmas songs. I love the decorations and the garland and
the mistletoe. I love tinsel. I love the traditions that are
hundreds of years old that are briefly given life once again, only to
immediately fade from our modern world. I love the way people change and
the kindnesses and recognition of the season. I love the whole thing –
it’s the centerpiece of my year.

Christmastime
is an oasis. An oasis not just in the course of the year, but in the
course of our lives. In the course of 2014 we did many things. But
Christmastime is a period that is completely removed from that bustle of
activity. It is a brief moment when people really do seem to be of good
cheer, and to recognize one another and to live, too briefly, a little
differently. For me personally, it's a moment to reconnect with my sense
of wonder, because wonder throbs through Christmastime like a powerful current
hums through a high-power cable. And, more importantly, it's a moment for
me to realize that I'm alive, and that's a pretty terrific and wondrous thing.

We will resume
blogging in the New Year! Merry
Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Wednesday, December 24, 2014

Few
books are more consistently misread
than A Christmas Carol (1843), by Charles Dickens (1812-1870). Everyone has seen some adaption of the story –
featuring anyone from Basil Rathbone
to Michael Caine to Mr. Magoo – or, more ubiquitous still,
some parody or sendup of the tale.

Ask
anyone what A Christmas Carol is about, and almost certainly they will tell you
it’s a parable about greed. Ebenezer Scrooge, they will tell you,
is a miser, hoarding his money at the expense of his employee, Bob Crachit, and
refusing to use a portion of it for the common good. His late partner, Jacob Marley, sends to him
the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future, they will go on to say, showing
him the error of his ways, and he reforms by becoming more generous.

That,
however, is not the story Dickens wrote, nor the lesson he wished to impart.

Scrooge
as miser is a woeful misreading of Dickens’ story. The great sin of which Scrooge was guilty was
not a niggardly withholding of money, but of personal warmth, distancing himself
from the rest of humanity, and refusing his place in the community.

Again
and again the mighty Ghosts of Christmas haunt our protagonist with his
refusals of human interaction, not mere miserliness. As a boy, Scrooge was left at school during
the holidays, alone and unloved. His
mother is never mentioned, and his father only in passing (‘he is so much
kinder now’), but not in any way that demonstrates he loves his son. Worse yet, Scrooge’s beloved sister Fran dies
early; and Scrooge is later apprenticed to a man who provides one of the few
positive influences of his life, Mr. Fezziwig.
But the lessons of Fezziwig do not take, and Scrooge turns away his
chance at lifelong love by allowing his fiancée, Belle, to leave him. Scrooge devotes himself to business, not
simply to grow rich and comfortable, but to fill up his ever emptying
life. He keeps fellow human beings at a
distance… alienating his one relative, his nephew Fred (presumably Fran’s child),
and closing himself off from his colleagues or employees.

The
great tragedy of Scrooge is that we see him as an imaginative boy, delighting in
childhood tales of Ali Baba and Robinson Crusoe … and we watch that boy almost
obliterated by the unimaginative and unforgiving man he becomes. What the Ghosts do, in essence, is connect
Scrooge with his inner child.

Few
authors wrote of children with the insight and intelligence of Dickens; perhaps
that is because he was one of those few adults gifted with a childlike sense of
wonder. Mind – not a childish sense of wonder, for that rare
commodity is no such thing. Dickens, as
Scrooge would, too, after his visitations, was able to see the world with the
clear-eyed view of a child, and reprioritize what’s important. As Dickens himself writes in the book, for it is good to be children sometimes,
and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child himself.

Though
not a children’s novel by any stretch of the imagination, A Christmas Carol has
been read and enjoyed by children for more than a century. This is fascinating, because a great deal of
children’s literature (most notably Peter
Pan) is about putting away childhood things and parting ways with wonder
and childhood passions. That is the way,
these books argue, to health.

Dickens,
on the other hand, believes in an integration of wonder into the adult for
successful and happy maturity. Scrooge
becomes whole by adopting the wonders of his vision of the Christmas Ghosts. They are not, like a visit to Neverland,
temporary, but permanent. This is much
to our taste. We here at The Jade Sphinx like our heroes (and
worldview) to incorporate wonder! Bravo
Dickens. At ‘em Scrooge!

If
you are visited by Christmas Ghosts tonight, we sincerely hope that the
experience is as terrible, as wondrous, and as life-affirming as that of
Ebenezer Scrooge. We could wish you no
greater gift.

Tuesday, December 23, 2014

Sometimes
even bon vivants develop a social conscience. Such was the case of George Robert Sims (1847-1922), dandy par excellence, who wrote humorous pieces for such magazines as Fun and The Referee.

Like most
aesthetes, his eyes were always open, and Sims saw the awful conditions created
by the Poor Law of 1834. Though a dedicated gambler and gamesman, Sims
made a great deal of money as a playwright and journalist. Sims wrote detective fiction, and would often
discuss current, real-life criminal cases with fellow friends Max Pemberton and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. He
would die destitute and largely forgotten, except for one searing poem,
summoning all of his indignation at conditions of the poor.

First
published in 1877, It’s Christmas Day in
the Workhouse was much parodied or dismissed as mere sentimentality, but
now, more than 100 years after its composition, it seems as fresh, compelling
and … true as ever.

Sims wrote
in his memoirs that after his poem was first published, it was vigorously
denounced as a mischievous attempt to
set the paupers against their betters. Class
warfare, indeed.

Following
the success of his poem, Sims gave lectures on the need for social reform.
After one of these meetings in Southwark, Sims was approached by Arthur Moss, a local School Board
officer, who told him the terrible poverty that large numbers of working class
people were experiencing in London. He
then offered to take Sims of a tour of the district.

Shocking
images from the tour were seared into Sims’ brain. He decided he would try to find a way of
bringing this information to the notice of the general public. He approached
his friend, Gilbert Dalziel, the
editor of a new illustrated paper, The
Pictorial World who agreed to publish a series of articles by Sims on the
living conditions of people in London.

Illustrated
by Frederick Burnard, the articles
were later published in a 1889 book, How
the Poor Live. Articles originally published in the Daily News appeared in another volume in 1889, Horrible
London.

Sims
also wrote many popular ballads attempting to draw attention to the plight of
the London poor, a selfless undertaking that raised public opinion on the
subject of poverty and led to reform legislation in the Act of 1885.

Friday, December 19, 2014

In this
last Friday before Christmas, we here at The Jade Sphinx continue to look at
some of our favorite Christmas carols.
Near the top of the list is O Little Town of Bethlehem, which has, we
think, a particular sweetness and charm.
There are many, many excellent recordings, but by far our favorite is
that of Burl Ives, which can be
heard here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pl0uReXPb6U.

Phillips Brooks (1835-1893) was an American
Episcopal bishop, famous for his preaching and liberal views. On Christmas Eve, 1865, he rode from
Jerusalem to Bethlehem and is said to have viewed the town from the field where
shepherds received the news of Christ’s birth from the angels. Three years later, he wrote the words of O Little Town of Bethlehem; his
organist, Lewis Redner (with whom he
had collaborated when writing the carol Everywhere,
Everywhere, Christmas Tonight, wrote the music, which he said came to him in a dream with an angel strain. It was first performed by the children of their
Sunday school.

In
England, Redner’s tune has been overtaken in popularity by a 1906 Ralph Vaughan Williams version of the
folk tune The Ploughboy’s Dream, or Forest Green. Other tunes by Henry Walford Davies and Joseph
Barnby have attracted less interest.

Thursday, December 18, 2014

Though certainly
not a carol in the traditional sense, Clement C. Moore’s wonderful Twas Night Before Christmas (originally
entitled A Visit From St. Nicholas) has
often been set to music. There are
several delightful musical renditions of the poem, and perhaps our favorite
here at the Jade Sphinx is that of Christmas Cowboy Deluxe, Gene Autry (1907-1998), recorded with Rosemary Clooney (1928-2002). If you don’t believe us – listen and see:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TaQPg10OmA.

(Before
moving on to Mr. Moore and Mr. Claus, a quick word on Gene Autry. The very best Christmas present one could get
is the classic cowboy’s Christmas album.
Autry introduced Frosty the Snowman, as well as Here Comes Santa Claus and Rudolph
The Red-Nosed Reindeer, and his recordings of these numbers are
definitive. In addition, the other songs
on the album – including Santa, Santa,
Santa and the lovely and evocative Merry
Christmas Waltz – are seldom-heard gems, and they have become a tradition
in our household. They should become a
tradition in yours, as well.)

Clement Moore (1779-1863) lived with his beloved
wife, Elizabeth, and their nine children in a large, comfortable Georgian manor
house in what is now the Chelsea section of New York. The estate, called Chelsea, rested on 96
acres of farmland, which hopefully illustrates that, if nothing else, Manhattan
is constantly changing.

Early
one Christmas Eve, in his carriage en route to Washington Market to buy a
holiday turkey, he began composing a Christmas poem for his six-year-old
daughter, Charity. Back home in his
study, he consulted Henry Irving’s History, and finished the poem in three
hours. That night, at supper, he read it
aloud to his family – it was the first time Twas Night Before Christmas was
heard by an audience. It was an instant
hit. Charity brought it to her Sunday
School class, and then friends had the poem published in the Troy, New York Sentinel the following Christmas in
1823. Moore, a scholar and serious
educator, was initially reluctant to admit authorship.

It was
more than 40 years later that the political cartoonist Thomas Nast (1840-1902) created the modern Santa Claus when
illustrating a republication of Moore’s poem.
As cartoonist for the influential illustrated Harper’s Weekly, for each Christmas issue he drew a Santa, which he
claimed was a welcome relief from his usual round of political cartooning. One wonders how he would feel now.

One of
the many interesting things in Santa’s evolution is that Moore originally conceived
of Santa as elf-sized. This somehow got
lost in the details, as Nast’s Santa was republished everywhere: calendars,
cards, posters and wrapping paper. Between
Moore and Nast, the modern Santa Claus was born.

Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Regular readers
of The Jade Sphinx know that we find
the tales of hobbits, orcs, elves and trolls by J. R. R. Tolkien (1892-1973) to be fairly indigestible. The popularity of Tolkien’s fantasy oeuvre is
just something we have to acknowledge, if not understand.

However,
we are delighted to report that the collection of letters he wrote to his
children under the guise of Father Christmas is infinitely delightful. Beginning at Christmas, 1920, when Tolkien’s eldest
son John was three years old, the author would write and illustrate letters to
his children for the next 20 years (through the childhoods of Michael,
Christopher and Priscilla.) Sometimes the
envelopes would have special North Pole stamps, or bear bits of snow or magic
dust. The meticulous pen-and-ink
drawings would show Father Christmas with his pack in the arctic waste, or building
a new home, or provide a peak into the storeroom of presents.

Over time,
Tolkien would expand upon his Christmas universe – Father Christmas will
acquire a new assistant, a great white North Polar Bear, the PB’s nephews would
later join the narrative, and, of course, various skirmishes with goblins in
their massive caves beneath the Pole.

These
goblins seem to return every now and then; and the North Polar Bear in single
combat takes down one hundred of them before the gnomes polish off the rest. The
goblins spend the next several years building their forces for one final
conflict. When World War II breaks out,
and so much of the world is occupied with the conflict, the goblins see this as
their chance to mount another attack on the North Pole.

The Father Christmas Letters were first published in 1976, three
years after Tolkien's death. There are several different editions, some
omitting the earlier (and less interesting) letters, while other deluxe editions
reproduce the letters in individual envelopes.
Depending on your pocketbook and interest in the illustrations, it is
hard to go wrong with any of them.

I have been
returning to this slim volume of beautifully illustrated letters every year
since I first received my copy nearly two decades ago. I respond to this simple book in ways I could
never relate to the more ambitious hobbit books. The world of Father Christmas is both more
familiar and more accessible than his stories of Middle Earth; frankly, Father
Christmas’ world in the North Pole is also infinitely more interesting than Bilbo
and Frodo Baggins. Also, since these
were written for his children without thought of publication, the many
novelistic failings Tolkien was prone too are absent. His inability to move narrative forward, or
his extremely tiresome digressions and displays of needless erudition are not
in evidence.

What is amply on display is Tolkien’s seeming
kindness, his delight in folklore and myth, his simple humanity, and his
delight in the holiday season. This book
contains all of Tolkien’s charms and none of his drawbacks – if you must own
only one of his books, this is the one.

One last
note – what a delightful thing to do for one’s children.Tolkien not only wrote these letters in the
rather shaky hand of Father Christmas, but he also created the many charming
pen-and-ink illustrations, as well.They
are surely not the casual work of a moment, but the loving and thoughtful
creation of a father trying to please his children.Perhaps the reason we connect to the Father
Christmas Letters so is not because of the letters themselves, but for the
warmth and love that went into their creation.

Friday, December 12, 2014

Joy to the World is a true oddity: it is one of the loveliest
and most delightful carols, but it really has nothing to do with Christmas. Read carefully:

Verse 1

Joy to the world! the Lord is come;

Let earth receive her King;

Let every heart prepare him room,

And heaven and nature sing,

And heaven and nature sing,

And heaven, and heaven, and nature
sing.

Verse 2

Joy to the earth! the Savior reigns;

Let men their songs employ;

While fields and floods, rocks,
hills, and plains

Repeat the sounding joy,

Repeat the sounding joy,

Repeat, repeat the sounding joy.

Verse 3

No more let sins and sorrows grow,

Nor thorns infest the ground;

He comes to make His blessings flow

Far as the curse is found,

Far as the curse is found,

Far as, far as, the curse is found.

Verse 4

He rules the world with truth and
grace,

And makes the nations prove

The glories of His righteousness,

And wonders of His love,

And wonders of His love,

And wonders, wonders, of His love.

The beautiful
lyric is by English Hymn writer Isaac
Watts (1674-1748) and is based on Psalm 98.
Watts first published it in 1719 in The
Psalms of David: Imitated In the Language of the New Testament, and Applied to
the Christian State and Worship. But,
clearly, the lyric refers to Christ’s return to earth, an event at the end of
time, and not his birth here on Earth. Joy
to the World does not celebrate Christmas, but, rather, the end of days. Joyful, surely, but sobering, as well.

Lowell Mason (1792-1872), an American, adapted
and arranged the music to Watt’s lyrics in 1839, using an older melody that may
have originated with Handel
(1685-1759), as pieces of the music appear in the composer’s Messiah. It is doubtful, however, that Handel composed
the entire tune.

Watts is
one of the more interesting figures connected with the Christmas holiday. Author of more than 750 hymns, he was also a logician
and theologian. It would seem that
versifying was uncontrollable for him – during prayers, he once said he was
distracted by A little mouse for want of
stairs/ran up a rope to say its prayers.
Punished for the infraction by his staunchly religious father, Watts
said, O father, father, pity take/And I
will no more verses make. We’ve all
known children like that. We will look
more closely at Watts in the weeks ahead.

There
are many fabulous recordings of Joy to the World, which is one of the most
popular carols in the English speaking world.
We at The Jade Sphinx particularly like the Arthur Fiedler (1894-1979) recording, as well as the one by Percy Faith (1908-1976). Our favorite, perhaps, is that of Nat King Cole (1919-1965); to our ear
his voice is a vehicle for pure happiness.

Thursday, December 11, 2014

Longtime
Jade Sphinx readers know of our
weakness for all things Christmas
and all things Sherlock Holmes. Holmes creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle combined the two himself with his wonderful
story of a Christmas goose and valuable gem, The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle. So what could be better than various authors collaborating
on a volume of Sherlock Holmes Christmas tales?

Well … I’m
sure that was the idea, but sadly the execution is often wanting. Holmes
For the Holidays is yet one of many collections of stories continuing the
career of Mr. Sherlock Holmes long after the death of Doyle. As is often the case with such anthologies,
some entries are markedly better than others.
This book contains stories by such celebrated authors as Edward D. Hoch (1930-2008), William L. DeAndrea (1952-1996), Loren D. Estleman (born 1952) and Jon L. Breen. It is a pleasant enough time-waster, but one
wishes that the ratio of good stories was a little higher than five out of 14. In addition, the fact that two stories
flirted with pedophilia, and an additional two included descendants of Ebenezer Scrooge, indicated to this
reader that three editors meant none of them were actually reading the tales
prior to publication.

The cream
of the crop included “The Adventure of the Canine Ventriloquist” by Breen. In it a long-winded professional writer (paid
by the word) is the victim of a Christmas haunting. Holmes and Watson are both shown to good
effect, and Holmes’ disdain for the supernatural world well portrayed.

The late
William L. DeAndrea’s “The Adventure of the Christmas Tree” is excellent, and
easily the jewel of the collection. In
it, Holmes must determine why someone would steal a nobleman’s Christmas tree,
only to return it. Though the story felt
more like a thriller – fairly reminiscent in tenor and tone to the author’s
wonderful novel, The Lunatic Fringe –
it still managed to distill a distinct Holmesian flavor.

Estleman,
who in previous novels paired Holmes with Count
Dracula, here has the Master Detective consult with a now-adult Tim Cratchit in “The Adventure of the
Three Ghosts.” Tim, now Lord
Chislehurst, acquired Scrooge’s firm long ago, and saved it from the brink of
financial ruin. Now he too is visited by
Christmas ghosts just as he is about to indulge in a little corporate
downsizing. (The more things change….) It is all a little too pat, but, for all of
that, quite amusing.

Gwen Moffat (born 1924) provides the most
disturbing story in the collection with “The Adventure in the Border Country.” Here, Holmes and Watson investigate a missing
husband, only to find that some crimes are more terrible than others.

Hoch –
simply the most indefatigable short-story writer in the mystery field – delivers
the delicious “The Christmas Client,” in which Prof. Moriarty is blackmailing Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) over some artistic
pictures the Reverend made of underage children. (The more things change….)

Though certainly
not everyone cup of holiday cheer, Holmes For the Holidays is a diverting read
for undemanding mystery buffs during the holiday season.

Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Here is
something rare and wonderful: a celebrity biography that is not only balanced, nuanced
and impeccably researched, but deeply human and moving. Richard
Zoglin (born 1948) has managed all of this in his indispensable Hope: The Entertainer of the Century, which
is simply one of the very best books of 2014.

It
should be noted that we here at The Jade
Sphinx think Bob Hope was a wonderfully
funny man. I saw him live at Madison
Square Garden in 1989, where he played with George Burns. Though the
show itself was quite bare-bones, it was a great joy to see them both, and
Burns was in particularly good form. Hope’s Road films, with frequent costar Bing Crosby, were the only comedy
series that paired two comic actors of equal caliber; and also remarkable were the
number of standards in the Great
American Songbook introduced by Hope throughout his film career.

Though alternately
forgotten or reviled today, Bob Hope
was one of the great comedians of the 20th century and a legitimate
hero, as well. Hope was born Leslie Townes
Hope in England in 1903. His family
moved to Ohio in 1908, where they led a fairly hardscrabble existence. Though things were difficult, Hope (and his
many brothers) did remember this time with affectionate nostalgia. However, despite the haze of Norman Rockwell reminiscence, it seems
clear that Hope lived in a fairly rough environment, and was something of a
rough kid himself. Zoglin’s research
uncovered some time spent in reform school (most probably for shoplifting),
which Hope in later years either deflected with an offhand joke, or sought to
expunge it from memory for good.

Hope
loved attention and was a born entertainer.
He moved from street busking to the vaudeville circuit where he honed
his craft as dancer, comedian and monologist.
Most important – he created the man known as “Bob Hope,” the brash,
confident and urban wise guy. Here was a
comic who did not rely on baggy pants or ethnic tropes, but, rather, was the
new All-American model; it is one of America’s greatest acts of assimilating
while defining the national character.
Hope ascended quickly, conquering Broadway, early movie shorts, and
radio before becoming a comedic leading man in films, a legitimate radio star
and Broadway name. The age of Hope had
arrived.

In a
book of deft touches, one of the many things that Zoglin conveys wonderfully is
Hope’s seemingly inexhaustible well of energy.
His capacity for work would deplete a platoon of men. Most comfortable onstage, where he could
inhabit his created persona, Hope would move from film shoot to radio show to
personal appearance or charity event in stride.
No wonder he lived to be 100.

The
defining moment of Hope’s career was his stint entertaining the troops during
World War II. Not content with setting
up camp shows and providing song-and-dance perilously near firing lines, Hope
and his entourage went from hospital to hospital visiting the wounded, would scrupulously
return messages home, and provide a much-needed morale boost. Zoglin peppers his account with several
hair-raising moments (Hope’s plane nearly crashed outside of Alaska), along
with heart-felt reminiscences from the ground-forces comforted by Hope.

Following
the war, Hope was a juggernaut – he made many of his finest films, his radio
show was immensely popular, he would go on to host the Academy Awards more than
any other celebrity, and the well of goodwill he created seemed nearly inexhaustible. He would go on to conquer television, the
only star of his generation to continue to work regularly in the medium (and to
good ratings) well into the 1990s.

Sadly,
things would crumble around him during the 1960s. It was a decade that was not only a public catastrophe
for the United States (from which we never recovered and are still reeling from
the effects), but a personal one for Hope as well. The social, cultural and political changes
effectively ended the American Century, and the sneering dismissal of the left and
the political disconnect of the right rendered Hope, the first great comic to
deal in current events, rudderless. He would
continue to do what he always did – entertain the troops – but in a polarizing
war; Hope became a tool of the right and an object of scorn to the left. He never fully understood what happened.

It is
part of the power of Zoglin’s book that Hope emerges from his life a
tragic-hero. Here is a man who achieved not
only the absolute pinnacle of success in his profession, but was a beloved
national treasure. Then, suddenly, the
public turned on him, leaving Hope bewildered, unsteady and resentful. Despite the multiple millions Hope made
during his career, it was adulation and applause that he needed most. When it stopped, the protective shell that he
created – the Bob Hope persona – became redundant. The personal man, the interior Hope, was insufficiently
developed; retirement wasn’t an option, and Hope overstayed his welcome,
tarnishing his once-sterling reputation.
He deserved better.

Zoglin
does not sugarcoat Hope’s many personal failings. He was a chronic philanderer, often
villainously cheap, occasionally high-handed and filled with a sense of
entitlement. But Zoglin also details the
many, many acts of simple kindness, his generosity to family and friends, and his
untiring civic service (there is not a charity event that Hope would not
play). In addition, Hope defined what it
meant to be a celebrity and a comedian – inventing the standup monolog,
harnessing the power of his fame for good causes, and his deep connection to
his fans. (The book includes a wonderful
story of Hope and frequent costar Bing Crosby
leaving a hotel with Hope carrying a pillowcase of his fan mail to answer; an incredulous Crosby said he threw his out.)

After spending
four days in Hope’s company while devouring this book, I was reluctant to let
him go. While it is possible to quibble
with Zoglin on some of his assessments (Zoglin dismisses Son of Paleface rather airily, while your correspondent thinks it one
of the greatest comedies of the 1950s), it is impossible to disregard the
achievement of this book. Your correspondent
confesses to actually crying at the end … and how many celebrity bios can
produce that effect?

Hope:
The Entertainer of the Century is required reading for anyone interested in
American Pop Culture.

Thursday, December 4, 2014

We continue
our look at the truly stellar show at the Frick
Collection here in New York featuring 10 masterpieces from the Scottish National Gallery with a
picture by Thomas Gainsborough
(1727-1788).

Gainsborough
was born in humble circumstances.His
father was a weaver in Suffolk, and not much is known about his mother.However, he seemed to be one of a brood of
creative children: his brother John (known as Scheming Jack) was a well-known
designer of curiosities, while his brother Humphrey invented the method of
condensing steam in a separate vessel.

Thomas
left home for London in 1740 to study art; his mentors included Hubert
Gravelot, Francis Hayman and William Hogarth.He married Margaret Burr in 1746, and they had two daughters.

A move
to Bath in 1759 was a great career boon, as there he became a fashionable society
painter.He was soon exhibiting in
London, and, in 1759, he became a founding member of the Royal Academy.Despite founder-status, he had a tempestuous relationship
with the organization, and he would sometimes pull his work from upcoming
exhibitions.

Thomas
and family returned to London in 1774, where he painted the royal family.He soon became enamored with landscape
painting, and his later years were devoted to depictions of the English
countryside.(He is credited as one of
the founders of the British landscape school.)He grew to love painting landscapes more than portraits, and his
landscapes are among his finest achievements. His career was cut short with a
diagnosis of cancer, and he succumbed in 1788.

Gainsborough
was a meticulous painter, but he painted with great speed and fluidity.His palette was generally light, with
brushstrokes that were precise without being fussy.

Your correspondent
must confess that he considers Landscape
with a View of a Distant Village on show at the Frick as among the weaker
selections in the exhibition.The
composition is perhaps too polished and too … calculated, leaving nothing for
the eye to linger upon.Though it
follows the strain of naturalism popular at the time, the eye is disturbed by
the overwhelming symmetry of the piece, as if calculated more for commercial
reproduction that personal contemplation.

More off-putting
still is the placement of various elements, as if Gainsborough were running
through a list of crowd-pleasers necessary for a picture.Pastoral lovers?Check.Strategically placed cattle?Check.Dog?Check.Even the clouds and trees look more like stock figures hustled out for
effect rather than a reflection of either mood or reality.

In person,
this rather wide picture further disappoints because the eye roams without
direction.As demonstrated in our posts
on Constable and Velasquez, artists gifted in composition keep the eye in
constant movement.There is nothing in the
composition to pull the eye along, and the effect is rather-well painted
elements that just lie there without dynamism.It’s not a bad painting … it is merely uninteresting.

It is
particularly disappointing when compared to the truly champion Constable
hanging on the same wall.There,
Constable’s fecund imagination takes a similar theme, and creates a picture
that is teeming with life.Indeed, the
composition suffered to some extent by sheer virtue of Constable’s ability to
render the scene real.Both painters
were men of talent and genius, but Constable was a painter of vision.

James Abbott

James Abbott is a California-based writer and arts advocate. His online column The Jade Sphinx (http://thejadesphinx.blogspot.com/) champions the Fine Arts, featuring stories on such concepts as recognizable quality, artistic heritage and tradition, and techniques of the Great Masters.